The Coming Of The Horseclans Read online

  “My lord’s pardon, please,” said Ramon. “But this is not my first such trip. I know these mountains. This pass doubles as a seasonal riverbed. If my lord will regard those watermarks” — he indicated discolorations at least twelve feet high on the rock walls of the gap — “in this season, a storm could blow in from the west at any moment. But a mile beyond this place there is a fine plateau, with a spring and grass and a few trees.

  “As for Don Gaspar, he is a tough hombre. And your sergeant, well, he looks to be the consistency of boiled leather. But I shall see that they are constantly attended and well-padded.”

  In camp, Ramón and Morré watched the gypsy horse leech-cum-physician — all they now had, as the master physician of the Conde-Imperial’s staff had been brained by a boulder early on in the ambush — fumble and blunder his way through a wound-closure, nearly burning himself with the cautery.

  Sergeant Angel Gonzales, whose deep wounds in thigh and upper arm assured him next place in line, had also been observing the less than efficient performance. Raising his good arm to attract his lord’s attention, he said, laconically, “Don Maylo, if it please you, I be a old sojer and I’ve survived right many wounds and camp fevers and I think I’d as lief take my chances with dying of blood-losing or the black rot as put my flesh neath the iron of that faraon fastidioso. Like as not, he’d miss his pass at my thigh and sear off my man-parts.”

  Morré smiled reassuringly down at his follower. “His lack of skill is not calculated to breed confidence, is it, Angel? Would you trust my hand guiding that cautery more?”

  The sergeant’s ugly head bobbed vigorously. “For a surety, Don Maylo. But . . . your pardon, my lord. My lord has burned wounds before?”

  “I, too, am an old soldier, Angel.” He said, gravely, “Yes, I have closed many a wound, over the years. And,” he added with a grin to lessen the palpable tension, “never once have I toasted valuable organs . . . by accident“

  With Angel and a couple of other lancers behind him, Morré and the men attending to the brazier and the dead physician’s other instruments proceeded with Ramón to his tent, wherein waited Don Gaspar de Garrigo.

  At Morré’s direction, the young knight was lifted off the camp bed and onto a sheet of oilskin spread on the earth. To Ramón’s questioning look, he answered, “That bed has too much give to it, Count Ramón, and we need above all things a firm surface beneath him. Have your men get his breeks off and his linens as well. When the iron burns his flesh, his body will release its water and probably its dung, too. You saw that, outside, there.”

  Morré reflected silently that chances were good the boy would die of lockjaw — tetanus infection — no matter what was done for him. “Short of,” he thought, “tetanus toxoid and antibiotics, but this poor lad was born five or six hundred years too late for such medical sophistication.”

  A crude spear — really just an old knife-blade riveted to a shaft — had been jammed completely through the calf of the right leg, two thicknesses of boot top-leather, the tough, quilted saddle-skirt and deeply enough into the horse’s body to kill him, outright. Then Don Gaspar had suffered the ill-fortune to lie pinned beneath the dead horse until Morré had chanced across him. Likely, the horse’s body fluid had seeped into the man’s wound.

  But Morré resolved to do the best he could with the primitive tools at hand. He sought through the bag of instruments until he found what he assumed was an irrigation instrument — a bulb of gut attached to a copper tube — then rinsed it inside and out with brandy from Ramón’s seemingly inexhaustible stock. He poured another quart bottle of the fiery beverage into a small camp-kettle, added half the measure of clear, cold spring-water and nodded to the waiting lancers who knelt to pinion the half-conscious knight into immobility.

  Filling the bulb with the liquid, Morré scraped away the clots at either end of the wound and, disregarding the fresh flow of blood, thrust the nozzle of the copper tube into one end, pressed the gory flesh tight about it and gave the bulb a powerful squeeze. Diluted blood squirted out of the opposite opening.

  And Don Gaspar, his raw flesh subjected to the bite of the brandy, came to full, screaming, thrashing consciousness. He was an exceedingly strong young man and the six lancers were hard-put to hold him down, much less still, so before he proceeded with his treatment, Morré called for three or four more men.

  But such was the pain of the second flushing of the penetrating stab that the hidalgo again lapsed into an unconscious state, though still he moaned and thrashed fitfully. When the wound was as clean as he felt he could get it, Morré took a thick strip of tooth-scarred rawhide from the physician’s bag, swished it about in undiluted brandy, then placed it between Don Gaspar’s jaws, securing it with an attached strap around the patient’s head.

  While one of his helpers sopped up the fluids — blood, brandy, water, serum, sweat and urine — from the oilskin, Morré looked to the cauteries in the glowing brazier, selected one and wrapped a bit of wet hide around the shaft.

  “All right, hombres, turn the señor over, then hold him as if your lives depended on it. Put your weight on him. You, there, sit you on his buttocks. Pablo, take your best grip on that knee. If your hands slip, I swear I’ll burn them for you.”

  The patient had the misfortune to regain consciousness bare seconds before Morré was ready. Ramón knelt, gently dabbed the younger man’s brow with a bit of wet sponge and softly admonished, “Be brave, now, Gaspar. Remember the honor of your casa. Set your teeth into the pera de agonía and implore Nuestra Senora that She grant you strength. Don Maylo is most skilled and it will be done quickly.”

  It was. Morré lifted the pale-pink-glowing cautery from its nest of coals, blew on it once to remove any bits of ash, took careful aim, then laid it firmly upon the entry wound, holding it while he counted slowly to five. He tried vainly to stop his nose to the nauseating stench of broiling flesh, his ears to the gasps and whining moans of his patient.

  Morré returned the cautery to the brazier and examined his handiwork, critically, while Don Gaspar relaxed, sobbing despite himself, and a lancer cleaned his buttocks and legs of what had come when his anal sphincter failed. Ramón, himself, sponged away the mucus which had gushed from the tormented man’s nostrils, all the while softly praising his bravery and self-discipline. Morré decided he could hardly have done a better job and, as he turned again to the brazier, hoped that the second and last burning would go as well.

  * * *

  After that day, if Morré had revealed himself to truly be a pretender to the throne of the Emperor of the Four Kingdoms and in league with El Diablo, himself, atop it all, not a noble or man of the tax train but would have raised his banner and his warcry, and Conde-Imperial Ramón would have been first.

  During the lengthy stay of the caravan in Ciudad Chihuahua, Ramón saw to it that his newfound friend, “Conde” Maylo de Morré, was feted and honored by his cousin, Duque-Grande Alberto. The shrewd Conde-Imperial also arranged an exhibition of archery so that his tales of Morré’s expertise might be believed in future days, and further took advantage of the day to realize more than a few golden pesos by confidently backing Morré against any and all local contenders.

  The way of the tax train now lay south — through the grand-duchy of Durango and so back to Guadalajara and the imperial court — and Ramón tried every argument and enticement he could muster to attempt to persuade Morré to accompany him, rather than following his announced course north, through the inhospitable and bandit-infested desert to Ciudad Juarez and El Paso del Norte. But it was all in vain. Morré was determined. The best that Ramón and his cousin, Duque-Grande Alberto, were able to accomplish was to convince the honored guest that he should delay his departure a couple more weeks and ride north in company with a detachment of replacement troops bound for Fortaleza Bienaventuranza, just north of the river which separated the sister cities.

  At one of the informal dinners a week or so prior to Ramón’s scheduled departure, the su
bject of old Don Humberto, lord of Mazatlán, came up in conversation.

  “Ay, poor Umbo,” sighed the Duque-Grande, dabbing at his beard and flaring moustachios with a linen napkin, “our two fathers were old comrades, you know, and he and I soldiered together forty years ago, both of us young ensigns in the Dragon Regiment. Ah, those were brave days!”

  Morré, looking every inch the hidalgo in his silks and tooled leathers and sparkling jewels, set down his goblet of chased silver and asked, “You said, ‘poor Umbo,’ my lord duke. May one inquire why? During the month I guested with him, Don Humberto seemed happy enough to me, and Ramón, here, tells me that the old man is a favorite of his overlord, loved by his people and much respected at the imperial court. He takes much pride in the horses he breeds, and rightly so. My own El Dorado is one of the finest and best-trained mounts I have ever straddled.”

  “Alas,” answered the Duque-Grande, “those horses are all that Umbo has left, these days. All four of his fine sons were slain while fighting bravely for the Emperor in Yucatán, these twenty years agone. Then the great plague which decimated the Four Mexicos three years later took his entire household — his wife, Dona Ana, his three young, unmarried daughters, the widows of two of his sons and all his grandchildren.

  “When he dies, there will be none of his casa to swear the oaths and take over the fief. The overlord will have to take the oaths from some outsider and then there will be trouble in Mazatlán . . . mayhap, much trouble. There often is when one casa replaces another, especially a native other, on a fief. Good old Umbo knows this too, and you can be certain the knowledge grieves him, for he is a good man, a good lord and loves his lands and people.”

  Morré shrugged. “It seems a problem simply enough solved, my lord. He appears a lusty man, even yet, so surely he has a bastard or six living nearby. Why does he not just recognize a likely man of his siring as legitimate? In his position, I would do such.”

  The Duque-Grande loudly cracked a knuckle. “Other lands, other customs, Conde Maylo. Yes, Umbo has many bastards of both sexes and ranging in age from mere toddlers to not many years his junior. And not just in his homeland, either — he always was mucho hombre. But, Conde Maylo, in the Mexicos, a commonborn bastard cannot so easily be legitimatized, not if lands and succession are involved.

  “Umbo could recognize every bastard of his casa in all of Mazatlán, but he would not be allowed to name any of them heir to imperial fiefs. To inherit lands, obligations and privileges, a man must be born to the hidalguía or, failing that, be a formally-invested caballero, elevated for conspicuous bravery in the service of the Emperor.”

  Morré stared into the dark-purple depths of his wine, for a moment, a smile flickering at the corners of his mouth. He was privy to some knowledge to which these two noblemen were not, and it had required time and cunning to set them up so perfectly for consummation of his plan.

  “My lord Duque-Grande, if a commoner soldier should take his stand over a fallen knight and fight long and hard, sustaining grave wounds himself, to protect that knight from a horde of foemen, would that be considered grounds for his elevation in rank?”

  The Duque-Grande nodded vigorously. “Of a certainty, but at least two noblemen must witness the act“

  Morré went on. “You claim friendship of old with Don Humberto and you recognize his predicament. Were you presented a bastard of his who had the requisite noble witnesses to stand for him, would you undertake the investiture?”

  “Why, of course, Conde Maylo!” snapped the Duque-Grande. “I should be more than overjoyed were it only possible for me to do such for my old comrade.” Then, Morré told his secret.

  Angel Gonzales, sometime sergeant of lances, was knighted in the spacious chapel of the grand-ducal residence by Duque-Grande Alberto, assisted by Conde-Imperial Ramón. The Duque-Grande’s gift to the new caballero was impressive in the extreme — a fully-trained destrier and all equipage. The Conde-Imperial gave a fine, thigh-length hauberk, mail leggings and a helmet.

  Young Don Gaspar, whose life Angel’s courage and ferociousness had saved, presented a beautifully wrought dagger-belt of interwoven chains and plaques of bronze and steel, a splendid dirk, eating knife and skewer (with matching hilts) and the gold-washed spurs which he buckled onto the new caballero, himself.

  Morré proffered the finest broadsword that many of the assembled throng of nobles had ever seen. Duque-Grande Alberto had truly hated to part with the magnificent weapon, but Conde Maylo had readily paid its full value — in honest-weight, unclipped gold pieces — and he had known to whom its buyer would present it.

  From the noblemen of the grand-duchy came an oaken battlelance and a triple-bullhide target, rimmed and bossed in iron. The noblewomen gave a silken pennon and two sets of fine plumes — one for his helmet, one for his horse’s headgear. Both the target and the embroidered pennon were executed with his device — suggested by Morré — a drawn bow, silver, with an arrow nocked, gold, on a field, black; the plumes reflected the colors of the arms — black, gold and silver.

  Throughout the solemn proceedings, Morré had to refrain from looking at Angel’s face, lest he burst out laughing. Ever since the moment three days ago when then-Sergeant Gonzales had been summoned to the formal proceedings at the palace, before the Duque-Grande himself and heard himself praised to the very skies by Conde-Imperial Ramón, Conde Maylo, Don Gaspar and all the other hidalgos of the tax train, the poor, humble soldier’s expression had been that of a man just kicked in the head by a pack mule.

  And throughout the long, formal dinner which followed the investiture and elevation, he simply sat, obviously bemused, at his place of honor on the Duque-Grande’s right Morré, who flanked the new caballero, had to constantly remind him to eat and drink.

  Most of the night before his train’s departure, Conde Ramón spent with Morré and several bottles of the Duque-Grande’s best brandy. As the empties accumulated, he suddenly leaned across the low table and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “Since first we met in Mazatlán, my lord and friend, Maylo, I have known what you are, though I played your game by the rules you laid down. But in the time since that meeting, we have, together, seen both life and death and shared many a bottle. Now we must take separate roads, for you ride north and it is my bounden duty to ride south with the morrow’s dawning. It well may be that we two never shall meet and drink and talk again.

  “As you know, by now, I am a man who never fails to render due honor to those whom Señor Dios has seen fit to place above me, for I hold this to be the only right and proper way for any man of any station to live his life. But, please, my friend Don Maylo, try to forgive the impertinence of my great curiosity. On this last night, can you not tell me your true rank and allegiance, on my word of honor that none other ever shall hear it from my lips?”

  Conde Maylo smiled. “Very well, Don Ramón. I really am a chief of the northern horse-nomads. I am six hundred years old and I have spent the last two hundred years roaming the world in search of a fabled island whereon men never age or die.”

  Ramón stared at him for a long moment, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed. Then he sank back into his chair, chuckling and shaking his head, ruefully.

  “For a second, there, you almost had me believing you, Don Maylo; your forbearance, please, but you are a convincing liar, when you wish to be. Very well, my friend, it was a most courteous refusal and gave me a good laugh, in the bargain. I shall not again pry into matters which must not concern me.

  “Come, then, we have two full bottles left.”

  The dawn leavetaking was emotional in the extreme. Tears streamed from Don Ramón’s black eyes as he clapped his arms about Don Maylo in a fierce abrazo. Between strangled sobs, he said, “My dear friend, I assure you that I never shall forget you and ever shall I pray for your continued health and welfare. If ever your travels lead you to the Condado of Guanajuato, be you assured of a welcome in keeping with your station and my sincere love and respect for you.
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br />   “In regard to the other matter, immediately I have discharged my duty to the Emperor and to my overlord, I shall dispatch Don Gaspar and an escort to Don Humberto at Mazatlán, to advise him of the elevation and investiture of his son, Don Angel Gonzales. By the time Don Angel returns to Mazatlán, no doubt he will be legitimate in the eyes of the law.

  “Don Angel gained much respect in the eyes of the hidalguía, hereabouts, when he refused to accompany me back south. His decision to carry out the orders of Don Humberto, despite his elevation, and see you safely to your destination was both proper and honorable. He will make a good caballero . . . and our Four Kingdoms stand always much in need of such men.”

  * * *

  In all times, all lands and among all peoples, military operations very seldom proceed on schedule, and the northernmost kingdom of the Four Mexicos, circa 2550 A.D., proved no exception to the norm. The last contingent of replacements for the fortress on the Rio Grande marched into Ciudad Chihuahua two full weeks after their supposed date of departure from that city and yet another fortnight elapsed before the column finally formed up just beyond the north gate of the city and, with brilliantly clad and equipped hidalgo officers on glossy, prancing horses in the lead, followed by a troop of lancers and one of dragoons, three hundred pikemen and crossbowmen marching to the beat of their massed drums, a long, rumbling train of heavy wagons and a final troop of lancers, they were on the road.

  Capitán Don Jorge de las Torres was pleased and flattered with his guests — one a new-made caballero of about his own age and the other a somewhat mysterious foreign nobleman. He and his lancers escorted these convoys three or four times each year and, after the first year or so, they became boring, routine and tedious. Therefore, he eagerly anticipated this novel element added to the journey.

  There was seldom even the brief excitement of a raid or an ambush. For all that the barren land through which they passed swarmed with ruffians of every description and for all that it was well known that among his wagons was the three-month payroll of the northern garrison and that of the government officials of the sister-cities, not to mention stocks of food, wines, clothing, equipment and special consignments of luxury-items, few banditti were willing to take on three hundred infantry and nearly a hundred horsemen.