The Death Of A Legend Read online

  Nor had raging forest fires been the only violence spawned by that mountain’s death agonies, for a hellish jumble of tumbled rock and splintered trees was now all that remained of what had very recently been a plateau bearing at least one Ahrmehnee village.

  After the reckless gallop down from that doomed plateau, Bili’s war party had found that any eastward progress was an impossiblity due to the roaring holocaust. Indeed, they had been compelled to flee northwesterly before the fires which were driven on a strong wind from the southeast. Amid the roiling smoke and confusion, among hills irrevocably altered by the earth tremors, not even the native Ahrmehnee warriors could be certain where they were, and the main party had become somehow separated — roughly two-thirds of them fleeing behind Bili of Morguhn, with the contingent which had included Komees Hari Daiviz and Sir Geros Lahvoheetos all gone to Wind for all anyone knew.

  It was a motley group which now lay encamped along the banks of the stream that chuckled through the narrow, steep-walled valley. Three distinct languages, plus several regional dialects, were to be heard in that camp. Middle Kingdoms Freefighters rubbed scale-shined elbows with Ahrmehnee warriors in thigh-length hauberks of beautifully fashioned chain mail. Confederation noblemen supped their meager rations across the fires from man-despising Moon Maidens, and the winter-sere grasses were cropped by a conglomerate herd of lowland destriers and chargers, the finely bred warborses of the Maidens and the rough-coated mountain ponies of the Ahrmehnee.

  Their unsatisfying scratch meal too soon consumed, most of the party settled for the fast-closing night; they huddled about the fires, wrapped in cloaks or saddle blankets, vainly seeking warmth and comfort on the hard, stony ground. Here and there wounded men and women whimpered or groaned in agonized wakefulness or moaned in delirium.

  Vahrohneeskos Gneedos Kamruhn of Skaht saw his semi-conscious brother made as comfortable as possible, then left him in the care of a grizzled Freefighter and slowly picked a way between the knots of supine warriors toward where the largest fire blazed, its leaping flames reflected from the burnished breastplate and smooth, shaven scalp of him who was become the uncontested leader of all — Thoheeks Bili, Chief Morguhn of Morguhn.

  Gneedos mused as he walked, thinking it somewhat odd that these fierce Ahrmehnee headhunters, who had hated and warred upon lowlanders for hundreds of years, not to mention the fabled, man-hating Moon Maidens, had not presumed to question even the least of Bili’s orders. But then the vahrohneeskos reflected that for all their outré customs and barbaric usages, this particular group of Ahrmenhee and Maidens were all proved and veteran warriors to whom the easy and natural assumption of command by a born war leader such as Bili would seem right and proper. Despite the fact that be had yet to see his twentieth winter, Bili of Morguhn was that rare kind of man — a fighting chieftain of fighters, his invisible mantle of leadership evident to all, be they old or young, male or female, Ehleen or Kindred or Burker or mountaineer.

  Tall towered this man the burker mercenaries had dubbed “Bili the Axe,” big-boned and heavily muscled, with wide shoulders and hips giving purchase to the sinews which enabled him to swing his huge, heavy axe as easily and effortlessly as a normal man employed his broadsword or saber.

  As did many professional fighting men in the Middle Kingdoms of the north, wherein he had fostered some ten years and had his war training, fighting in the army of the Iron King, Gilbuht of Harzburk, Bili kept his scalp shaved smooth for reasons of cleanliness and comfort under a much-worn helmet. But his eyebrows were a blond as light as the tassels of green maize. Where not darkened by sun and weather, his skin was a fair pink-white, and his eyes were of a variable blue. Once, not too long back, those eyes had easily and often warmed with humor and friendliness, but now they were become cold and hard, when not wary and quick-darting, the skin at their outer corners beginning to permanently crinkle and the brow above them to furrow with the weights and worries of command.

  Below a narrow nose slightly canted to the right by some old blow, his pale, thin lips frowned above a strong, square chin, and his face was now abristle with a two-day growth of dusty blond beard. Gneedos, though he liked and deeply respected Bili, could not say that he considered the young Chief of Morguhn a handsome man.

  “But,” he chuckled to himself, “women obviously do. Well, at least one woman does. All the army at Morguhnpolis, on the march up to Vawnpolls and then during that bastardly siege, knew him to be the chosen lover of the High Lady Aldora, and she could’ve had any man in the host at a mere snap of her fingers.”

  Unbeknownst to Gneedos, Bili too was just then doing some personal reflecting.

  “Sun and Wind, but this is a pretty pickle we’re in here.” As he often did when worried or troubled, he absently rubbed his thumb along a puckered scar on the right side of his thick neck. “When I was summoned from Harzburk — was it only a year ago? less even than that? — I rode south wondering bow I’d keep from dying of sheer boredom as chief of a peaceful duchy for the rest of my life.

  “Peaceful, hah! One, maybe two nights of rest I got, ere my mothers were filling my ears with the plots and counter-plots and festering rebellion among the Ehleenee. And ere I’d been in my duchy a week, those priest-ridden whorespawn had made to ambush me and my party in Horse County, and a chancy thing that was, too.

  “Wind be praised for Geros Lahvoheetos. Had he not fought his way back to Horse Hall — probably,” he grinned to himself, “knowing him, leaving a trail of piss all the way — I’d’ve been cold meat that night.

  “Then I and the loyal nobles and poor old Pawl Raikuh’s Freefighters had to hack our way out of my own damned capital city, only to find ourselves besieged by an army of peasants and gutter scrapings, led by a gaggle of bloodthirsty priests and a madman and pervert. And when once the High Lord is out of Morguhn and Vawn, I still mean to see that buggering bastard Myros of Deskahti, madman or no, impaled. It’s a debt I owe to my brother Djef, and to all the other brave men who’ve gone to Wind because of him and his ilk.

  “But before he died, Djef and the men he led out on that nighttime sally surely blooded the swine.” A grim smile flitted across his face as he thought of how the besiegers’ transport and stores and siege engines had blazed on that dark night and of how the ill-led and thoroughly confused rabble had spent most of the hours of darkness fighting each other under the impression that their dimly seen opponents were Bili’s men.

  So badly had the besiegers been demoralized and decimated that, upon receipt of word that Confederation cavalry was on the march from the north, the secular commander and his staff had fled back to the supposed haven of the walled city of Morguhnpolis, taking the senior ecclesiastic with them but leaving the common priests and all their remaining forces, as well as their wounded officers and men, to the tender mercies of the blood-mad garrison of Morguhn Hall.

  And, heedless alike of his still-unhealed wounds from the ambush and of the well-meant advice of an older man who was both his cousin and a retired general of the Confederation, Bili had mounted his scratch force of less than a hundred men and ridden out in hot pursuit of the retreating thousands. And it had been a butchery; most of the self-styled “crusaders” had thrown aside their weapons and sketchy armor to facilitate their flight, and precious few of those who still were armed put up any sort of resistance when finally they were ridden down.

  But Bili had been fostered, reared and trained in a hard school by a pitiless ruler, and he saw the murderous hunt on to the very walls of Morguhnpolis, he and his men slaying the screaming, running, unarmed would-be rebels until all — both men and horses — were as blood-splashed as autumn hog butchers, until swords and sabers and axes and spears were all dull-edged and clotted all over with sticky gore, until scarcely an arrow or a dart remained unused and both men and beasts trembled with weariness.

  Knowing that the city could not be held against the oncoming regulars of the Army of the Confederation and unwilling to tie down their few effectives in
an open fight with Bili and his retainers, the surviving rebels within Morguhnpolis had first securely barred all four gates from within, then fled the city by secret ways. Nor did they stop until they were completely out of the Duchy of Morguhn and safety within the neighboring Duchy of Vawn, wherein a similar rebellion had succeeded.

  One of the rebellious nobles of Morguhn had been the younger brother of Komees Hari Daiviz — a man of above fifty years, owning no known mindspeak ability, no arms training other than the normal basics learned in their youth by gentlemen and no military experience. This Drehkos Daiviz of Morguhn held the minor title of vahrohneeskos, which had been part of his patrimony, but he owned no trade or profession to occupy him, and after the death of his wealthy wife he had drifted into the clandestine rebellion mostly out of boredom.

  However, before the rebels had fled Morguhnpolis. the senior secular commander, Vahrohnos Myros, had suffered some type of seizure and had lapsed into a coma, whereupon all had looked to Drehkos to command. With the direct escape route to the southwest clogged by a vast horde of fleeing peasants and city commoners, Drehkos had perforce led big mounted party north, into the Duchy of Skaht, and then west, into the mountains of the savage, headhunting Ahrmehnee.

  Doing only what be sensed was best and with no scintilla of military training or experience to guide him, Drehkos had led his ill-armed and ill-supplied force southwestward in a weeks-long running fight with the cunning Ahrmehnee. He had been racked with sorrow and regret that he had left a good third of his initial numbers dead or missing in those mountains, but those who knew better had all quickly hailed him a military genius to have emerged with such small losses. Moreover, the rebel nobles of Vawn had insisted that a man of such sagacity and prowess was far better fitted to lead and command the rebel forces now concentrated in and about the walled city of Vawnpolis than were any of them.

  “If only the Ahrmehnee had managed to take the head of that treacherous dog of a Drehkos,” thought the young thoheeks, “the campaign would’ve been concluded last summer and at far less cost, too.”

  An ancestor of the murdered thoheeks and Chief of Vawn had collected during his time some half-dozen tomes having to do with various aspects of warfare. That Drehkos had chanced upon these dusty books had been pure luck — good for him and the rebels, bad for his opponents; indeed, fatal for many. His careful reading and rereading of the small collection had been of immense aid to him in strengthening the existing defenses of the city, in adding new innovations and in harrying the army marching up from Morguhn toward Vawnpolis.

  With the two largest cities of the duchy — Morguhnpolis and Kehnooryos Deskahti — back in loyal hands and with the smaller towns and the countryside of Morguhn being purged — bloodily purged — of rebels and rebel sympathizers by Bili and his fast-moving column, augmented by troops of Confederation cavalry. High Lord Milo’s summons had brought in armed and mounted nobles from leagues around, thousands of unemployed Freefighters from the Middle Kingdoms north of the Confederation, herds of remounts and draft or pack animals, mountains of supplies and gear and wheeled transport. Then, with all of Morguhn secure and garrisoned, the army — Confederation regulars, Freefighters and heavily armed nobility — had commenced a march upcountry, with Vawnpolis as their goal.

  But Drehkos, armed with his new ars militaris, had made that march much longer in time and far and away more expensive in supplies stolen or destroyed and in blood spilled and lives lost than his meagre forces had had any right to do. His bitter price for the leagues the invading force gained had been mostly exacted in hit-and-run raids, harassment of the supply lines and cutting off of stragglers; but on two singular occasions, he had struck openly, hard and in force.

  Bili’s mind strayed back to his memory of the first of those attacks, the sole saving grace of which had been to teach a few sorely needed lessons to the generally brave but stubborn and ill-disciplined lowland nobility.

  As the van of the column of nobles and Freefighters strung out along the length of a relatively straight stretch of road. the brush-grown slopes to either side erupted a deadly sleet of arrows and darts — a sleet doubly deadly in that many of the Freefighters, who as professionals should have known better, had aped their noble employers in removing helmets and loosing the laces of scaleshirts and gambesons to let air to their profusely sweating bodies.

  And so, while men on the road shouted and screamed and died or fought to control wounded and frenzied or terrifiedly shrieking horses, a yelling double rank of armored horsemen, presenting lances and spears, waving swords and axes, careered down the steep road shoulders to strike both flanks in a ringing flurry of steel and sharp death.

  From the very onset, it was obvious that the noblemen were the preferred targets of the shrewdly effective ambush, for most of the point troop of Freefighter cavalry had been permitted to pass unmolested between the brushy jaws of the trap and now were milling on the narrow roadway as they tried to wheel about. Nor was the plight of the Red Eagle Troop improved when the rebel archers began to range them; the seemingly sentient shafts sought out every bared head, sank into vitals ill protected by loosened jazerans or pricked horses into a rearing, bucking, screaming chaos.

  Then, abruptly, the rain of feathered agonies slackened as the most of the hidden bowmen tuned their weapons toward the second troop, which was rounding the hill at the gallop, with the Rampant Blackfoot Banner snapping above the heads of the leading flies.

  Bili had had no time to unease his famous axe, so he had drawn his broadsword and snapped down his visor in a single, practiced movement, grasping the handle of the small target hung from his pommel knob at the same time he dropped Mahvros’ reins over that knob.

  For his part, the blood-hungry black stallion screamed a joyous challenge, and his fine head darted, snakelike, to sink his big yellow teeth into the neck of the first enemy mount to come within range. The bitten gelding was a hunter with no scintilla of war training and no slightest intention of being further savaged by a raging stallion; sidling, he proceeded to buck off his rider just in time for the unhorsed rebel to be ridden down by the second wave of rebel attackers.

  Roaring, from force of long habit “UP! UP HARZBURK!” and then belatedly, “MORGUHN! A MORGURN! UP THE RED EAGLE!” Bili stood in his stirrups, his brawny arm swinging the heavy sword with such skill and force that its wide blade severed the head from a lance and the head from its wielder in one single figure-eight stroke.

  For a brief moment he wondered how so large a mounted force had remained unobserved by both vanguards and flank guards. Then his every thought was of dealing death and avoiding death, and all the world for him became the familiar tumult and chaotic kaleidoscope of battle the earsplitting clash of steel on steel, the marrow-deep shock of blows struck and blows received, the blinking of cascades of salt sweat from eyes, while gasping for fresh breath within the stifling confines of the helm.

  The warhorse, Mahvros, was in his chosen element and could not have been happier, as he lashed out with steel-shod hooves, tore at horseflesh and manflesh with big, square teeth, used his superior height and weight to deadly effect against the rebels’ mounts, few of which shared his training or ferocity.

  Bili traded hacks and parries with briefly appearing and quickly disappearing opponents, while the air about him was unceasingly rent by mindless screams of man and horse, by death shrieks and shouted warcries, and rapidly became noisome with the stink of spilled blood, horse sweat and man sweat, and thick with choking dust rising up from the churning, stamping hooves.

  Instinctively, Bili would shift his weight in order to help Mahvros retain his footing on the body-littered roadway, often leaning sideways to strike around the stallion’s chain-armored neck and withers as the savage black horse reared to make more deadly use of his fearsome forehooves.

  Up the road, beyond the trap, Captain Pawl Raikuh and Sergeant Geros Lahvoheetos, closely followed by the man bearing the Red Eagle Banner and Geros’ squad — not a man of whom
was wounded, thanks in no small part to the strict discipline enforced by the young sergeant, which had seen all helms in place and secured and all jazerans fully laced up — had forced a path to the arrow-raked tail of the chaotic jumble their troop was become. They had collected more unwounded troopers on still-sound hones along the way.

  Raikuh, seasoned veteran that he was, took the time to form his force of survivors into road-spanning files behind him, Lieutenant Krahndahl, Sergeant Labvoheetos and the big Lainzburker standardbearer. Then, waving his sword and shouting, “MORGUHN! UP MORGUHN!” he led a crashing charge into the melee broiling ahead.

  Twenty yards out from the fierce fight, the standardbearer uttered a single, sharp cry and reeled back against his cantle, the thick shaft of a war dart wobbling out of an eyesocket. Both Geros and Bohreegahd Krahndahl snatched at the dipping banner, but it was the young sergeant’s hand which closed about the ashwood shaft and jerked it free of the grasp of the dead man.

  And then they were upon the enemy, and Geros could never after recall more than bits and pieces of that gory and terrifying mosaic of blood and slaughter.

  But when someone commenced to furiously shake at his left arm and pound a mailed fist on his jazeran. he awoke — shocked to notice that his clean, oiled and carefully honed sword was now hacked and dulled along both edges and running fresh blood from tip to quillions; moreover, the blood had splashed and fouled his entire right side and even his horse housings.

  “. . . and rally!” That voice, Captain Raikuh’s, he suddenly realized it was, and shouting directly in his ear. “Steel damn you, man! Raise the banner! Raise the fucking thing and shout, ‘Up Morguhn’ and ‘Rally to the Red Eagle.’ Do it, you son of a bitch! Do it now, or I’ll put steel in you!”